• WFP continues to support a growing number of Burundian and Congolese refugees hosted in six camps in Rwanda. In addition, WFP is building national capacity to design and manage home grown hunger solutions.

Likely average Season A harvests to help maintain favorable food access

KEY MESSAGES

Overall, the 2018 Season A harvest is expected to be average, despite some production deficits in the east. With existing income-earning opportunities and a favorable Season B rainfall forecast, Minimal (IPC Phase 1) outcomes are expected to continue countrywide through September 2018. However, some poor households in Kayonza, Kirehe, and Nyagatare districts in Eastern Province may already be in Stressed (IPC Phase 2) due to below-average Season A production.

UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, is calling for calm and restraint after worrying reports of a refugee protest turning violent in Rwanda’s Kiziba refugee camp.

Rwanda’s Kiziba refugee camps is located in the Karongi District, in Western Rwanda and hosts over 17,000 refugees from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, around 77 per cent of which are women and children.

Protesting refugees were reportedly angry about reduction in food assistance.

Around 2,000 people from the 17,000-strong Karongi camp in western Rwanda marched out of the camp to protest a 25 percent cut in food rations

By Clement Uwiringiyimana

KIGALI, Rwanda, Feb 20 (Reuters) - Congolese refugees in Rwanda said soldiers shot at them and wounded at least two people on Tuesday as the refugees tried to march out of their camp in protest at a cut in food rations.

WFP continues to support a growing number of Burundian and Congolese refugees hosted in six camps in Rwanda. Additionally, WFP is building national capacity to design and manage home grown hunger solutions.

African countries are divided on the fate of Rwandan refugees within their borders following the expiry of the deadline of the cessation clause that effectively ends their refugee status.

The cessation clause is part of the 1951 Refugee Convention, which allows countries to declare that the reasons that led to people fleeing the country no longer exist, and that all those who fled should be able to return or risk losing their refugee status.

On Friday 12th January, 2018, 350 youth refugee students from 4 refugee camps (Gihembe, Nyabiheke, Kiziba and Kigeme) graduated from Gitwe Adventist College located in Ruhango District after 45 days of training and vocational and Education training (TVET).

All graduands trained by ADRA Rwanda and IMPACT HOPE are Congolese youth refugees. They were trained on different trades: 146 trained on hair dressing, 58 on Electricity installation and domestic maintenance, 86 on Tailoring, 35 trained on Plumbing and 24 trained on Permaculture.

KIGALI - The World Food Programme (WFP) and United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) appealed today to donors to contribute funds so that a 25 percent reduction from January onwards in food or cash assistance for more than 100,000 refugees in Rwanda can be reversed as soon as possible.

Some 130,000 Burundian and Congolese refugees in camps in Rwanda rely on humanitarian assistance to meet their food needs. They receive from WFP either monthly food distributions or cash transfers so that they can buy food in local markets.

In Summary
- Parties cited the need for more time to promote voluntary repatriation, while a section of asylum countries grappled with logistical challenges to examine individual cases of refugees seeking exemption or integration.
- Deadline for cessation elapses on January 1, 2018.

Rwanda's government has adopted a policy that enables refugees to work for a living as donor funding to support those in refugee camps reduces.

According to officials from the Ministry of Disaster Management and Refugee Affairs (MIDIMAR), the policy seeks to, among other goals, address a 10 per cent reduction in resources for feeding camp-based refugees. The officials said the policy would also help ease pressure on Rwanda as a host country.

We are a happy family after returning in our home country and getting our own house

Under the Sustainable Return and Reintegration Project of MIDIMAR, 75 houses were provided to most vulnerable Rwandan returnees. NDAGIJIMANA Jean Baptiste, 52, married to UWIMANA Alivera, 35, with 3 children is the beneficiary who received one of those houses.